Let's talk Europe

Exit, stage right for bully Orbán

It seems that the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s plan to close the door on Hungary’s border backfired a bit today when turnout figures, although not fully confirmed yet, are showing at less than 50 per cent, which means that the referendum is void due to a low volume of voters. Orbán opposes plans to relocate a total of 160,000 migrants across the EU and took his opposition to the people in a referendum.

So what has happened exactly? Well, experts (and doesn’t the right wing enjoy experts) will probably come up with some reason for why the people of Hungary just couldn’t have been bothered to go out on a strategically chosen Sunday and let Europe know that Hungary is a no vacancy hotel for immigrants and refugees. It seems that the big bully in his tight fitting suit and machismo hairdo has not exactly read his constituents too well. Under the proposed scheme Hungary would receive a measly 1,294 asylum seekers; less than an average university graduation party, yet Orbán and his lot still think Christian Europe is under threat from these invaders.

So was it fear? Did the people not want to show their true colours so they decided to stay at home, or was it just apathy for this entire crisis? We may never know, because if we are to judge the Hungarian regime by past standards of the right wing, then it will be all rhetoric followed by accusations of cheating against the opposition parties.

Or maybe, just maybe, the Hungarian people are not such great fans of the bully from Budapest after all. Because if you truly want to defeat a bully, you don’t beat him, you ignore him.